Search for traces by the grandchildren

On the footsteps of his family history, Steve Stulman from New York, along with three of his adult children, visited the International Tracing Service (ITS) in Bad Arolsen. The family looked at original documents in the archives, and visited the birthplace of the mother and the memorial in Breitenau where the great-grandfather died in a labor camp in June 1941. “The program of this visit is especially for them,” Stulman said, referring to his children.

“Prisoner Salomon Kron died today at 4 p.m. in the field during labor,” says the document from the labor camp Breitenau. Kron was born in 1869 in Wolfhagen, Northern Hesse, and ran a business there. After the pogrom of November 1938, he was forced to sell his property and move to Kassel. From there, on 11 April 1941, he was deported only 15 kilometers away to Breitenau. The hard work and the poor conditions allowed the then 71-year-old to survive just two months.

In August 1938, his son Theodor Kron successfully immigrated to New York. Eight months later, he brought over his wife Auguste and his daughter Elga. “Our grandparents did not talk much about the time back then,” recalls Stulman’s daughter Laura. “We did not ask, and they did not talk.”

That’s why the grandchildren now intently study the documents. Steve Stulman has already collected two folders filled with photos, letters, and documents. The last discovery, made a week earlier at the Leo Baeck Institute, includes an eyewitness report on the November pogrom in Wolfhagen, where the looting of the Kron family’s house is mentioned. “We were very close to my grandparents,” says Laura. Theodor Kron worked as a doctor around the clock, but also knew how to enjoy life. “It’s my family, my history. I feel very close to it.”